C3D 2012 - Pipe and Structure Band labels

[Anonymous]

Hi there,

Had a play with the new pipe rule in C3D 2012 to finally get my pipes to end at the structure inner walls. Yay!

So, thumbs up to AD for listening to this request. However,

Problems I found at first glance (and I am prepared to accept that I may have missed something here)

1. The pipes don't actually seem to start and end at the structure Inner walls when viewed in a PV. (See pic attached)

The inlet pipe end stops at the outer wall and the outlet pipe stops somewhere inside the manhole but not at the inner wall. I need to do a bit more investigation yet.

2. Pipe Band labels.

   We get pipe start and end cover values.  We get Pipe start and end invert levels. 

    So the pipe must know where the  ground level is (because it knows the cover),,,but we don't get a ground level band label in the selections for pipe data. (Because on a steep slope, the width of the manhole makes a diffference to the ground levels above the pipe ends).

3. Similarly for structures, what I would like to be able to know is the drop across the structure because it is a design parameter that our local authorities want to know here in NZ...but sadly, it is not available.

Now, this would likely be because there may be more than one inlet pipe into a manhole and C3D would need to work out which pipe that would be...so this would then rely on an alignment to be available so that the correct pipe level could be selected on a profile view appropriate to the alignment that the pipe sits on.  I guess the problem here for me is that the programmers allow pipes to be projected onto a profile view...which is fine in itself, but to adequately document the pipe location as a chainage, there needs to be an alignment that is coincident with the cl of each MH and running along the cl of each pipe run displayed on a PV. So with this element missing from the thinking, it seems that we will not be able to get a label that would display the drop across the manhole. ****.  We got closer, but didn't finish the race.

If anyne has found a way, I would be grateful for an explanation.

cheers,

Peter T

[Anonymous]

Nice post Peter.

I will be waiting with baited breath for any responses.

[Matt.Anderson]

Peter- 

1. What structure are you using to reach that result?  The best way to visualize the locaiton of the pipe would be to turn off the structure masking and make the inner walls display.  Is it a custom part or one of the OOTB families?  

2. Do you have an example drawing and/or profile you can attach?  This pipe ability did not produce any pipe band changes.

3. As for pipe drop, the best you might be able to do is with a Profile View Depth label.  THe only other item would involve setting points at the invert of each pipe and structure reference text to perform the calculation between them.

[Anonymous]

Hi Matt,

I used a copy of an OOTB manhole structure with no frame.  There is no part masking on the graphic I sent through.  With this rule in action set to inner walls, there is no need for part masking in PV.

I still am firmly of the view that for all this to work properly that the concept of an invert profile or a set of invert profiles tied to alignments fixed at cl of pipes is the way to go.  This would enable the use of a second set of rules to "jig" the system into its final place taking into account the whole network and the location of pipe runs,  It has to be this way so that a structure drop (across structure) can be determined where there may be more than one inlet to a manhole and the drop across the manhole should be adjusted for the worst case pipe inlet and applied to remaining inlet pipes.  Otherwise the benching is difficult to build.  An invert profile could be automatically generated as pipes were added or at least as soon as an aligmnent was added to a pipe run.  It would be fixed to the pipe invert at the pipe endpoint chosen by the user but the user would have the ability to design the invert within the structure if required.  I guess this should be on the wishes forum.

The use of the pipe end location rule does have an effect on band as the location of the pipe end invert levels changes to the pipe end locations.

Then there is the issue around how would one design a triple-barrel culvert (for example) that is attached at each end to long headwalls? You can't do this in plan as far as I am aware.

I currently have a workaround that uses a detail that I show with every C3D project. My difficulty is that C3D knows where everything is.  What is also miissing is the ability to stagger pipe band labels (for closely-spaced manholes) and currently we cannot reference pipe data from structures labels and vice versa.

We need alignments to display pipes on a PV, so why not make good use of them to anchor a pipe design with real-world functionality?

Thanks for your response,

cheers,

Peter